


Trip the Line

by Ealasaid



Series: A City In Shadows [12]
Category: Homestuck, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: AU, M/M, Mobsterswitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-16
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-26 03:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ealasaid/pseuds/Ealasaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the impending doom of being locked in a cell that had you scared, because with your amount of priors the cops’d lock you away and conveniently misplace the key until you offed yourself or got someone else to kill you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Your name is Snooping Scout and you are in such fucking unbelievable shit, you’re practically hyperventilating. The bar is dead silent as you stand over some poor sap who managed to make some smart comments you didn’t want to hear only to smash his face into your favorite knife, and all you can think is,  _Detective is going to shit bricks, fucking hell._

Everyone’s frozen in tableau, you see when you dart your glance around the room frantically. They’re all staring at you or the dead guy, horror and shock and surprise written over their faces like so many trashed billboards.  _Fuck_ , you think again, you need to get the hell out of here.

You yank your knife out of the barfly’s face and bolt for the back door, bursting out into a tiny loading alley.

It had been going on for years it seemed, though it was probably only a few months. Five months ago, Pernicious Innovator had done some freaky shit to your eye that left ~~(your lover?)~~  one of your many bad decisions about to dump you in the river with some chain accessories to help drown you better. That you hadn’t was due to some freak fluke of a conscience—he left you to (possibly) die in an alley instead.

(A lot of shit happens with you and alleys, it seems. Shady dealings, sloppy makeouts, losing your  _arm—_ )

So you’d been avoiding the Twilight Scoundrels and their vicious female associates as much as humanely possible, and been largely successful… until a few months ago.

Scofflaw tracked you down to some dive and appeared out of nowhere, right from the shadows it seemed. He was at your table and he’d slung an arm over your shoulders in greeting, trapping you in your chair before you could scram for the door.

“’Lo, scout!” he’d said cheerily. “Fancy finding you here. Haven’t seen you around much, lately! How’re things going?”

He kissed you before you could answer, and fuck it all if it hadn’t felt good. You’d been in a relentlessly bad mood since August, and there was absolutely no reason why that mood should have inexplicably lifted. Most certainly, it should not be better  _now_.

The vague realization that you’d missed your dealings with Scofflaw unleashed a furious storm of anger, guilt, and humiliation that burned a hole where your stomach should have been. You smacked your forehead into his face and made a break for the door as he reeled back in his chair, blood shooting between his fingers where he clapped a hand over his broken nose. You didn’t see him for another two weeks.

_That_  time, he slammed you up against a wall with that same cheery smile, making you lose your breath. “No hard feelings, eh, scout?” Scofflaw asked with a wink as you wheezed dazedly. “After all, it’s not like you  _died_  or anything.” His nose still looked pretty bad, but that didn’t stop him from charging in for another invasive kiss. One arm sufficed to keep you pinned; the other slid up under your shirt as your swearing turned into a muffled moan. You were halfway to disregarding all thought processes when he pulled away abruptly and let you topple to the ground.

“Until next time,” he said with another wink, tipped his hat, and disappeared.

The run-ins were random, seemingly entirely unconnected: they could happen while you were on stakeout just as easily as they happened when you were already home. It was as if Scofflaw was just popping in for a brief hello or running into you on the street by chance; sometimes he simply taunted you and sometimes he’d put you into a position where you ended up helpless in his hands. No amount of bodily injury you inflicted or attempted to inflict deterred him. And it was driving you up the fucking wall.

You never knew what Scofflaw was going to do and you knew that whatever it was, there was very little chance you could stop him from doing it. It scared the hell out of you. And yet, despite the fact that you’d lost an arm to the guy’s crazy singer… friend… and an eye to his right hand man’s loopy logic, despite the fact that Scofflaw himself had  _almost dumped you in the river_  to  _die_ , you were still inexplicably attracted to the dangerous man. With his shadow magic shit and extraordinary natural talents (though you’d never say that out loud), you could almost call him the most powerful man in Midnight City. No one crossed him and he did as he pleased.

It had been earlier this evening when you’d sat down to drink and a shitty bar, tumbling these conclusions over and over in your head. No matter what, you couldn’t seem to find a way to get out of the situation—stuck horribly fearing the man youmight probably love also really, really wanted to have sex with. Getting drunk had seemed like a great idea at the time, and that had led to angrily snarling your disjointed thoughts to the wall, which meant that some asshole clearly had to interject with his snarky comments, prompting—well—fuck.

It’s not like you haven’t killed anyone before. Pretty much everyone around was involved in the war one way or another. You scrapped around on the streets while the city was getting was getting built and you fought for bread just the same as the rest of the displaced veterans of senseless war, grinding those so-called morals that were instilled in your clone upbringing to dust and leaving you a lot more grey than white. It was the impending doom of being locked in a cell that had you scared, because with your amount of priors the cops’d lock you away and conveniently misplace the key until you offed yourself or got someone else to kill you.

And where are you supposed to go? It’s not like there’s much out there for you. The other cities are thousands of miles away, if there are any. It’s just a desert outside of the county’s limits. You’re in a city sprawled in the middle of some farms that have been eked out of harsh living conditions. Maybe in another couple hundred years there’ll be more out there, but you need to hide now, not then, and the thought of disappearing into the desert is almost as horrifying as winding up in a jail cell.

It’ll be hard to blend in anywhere once the police start hunting for you, but you really don’t see any other option right now.


	2. Chapter 2

Your name is Dead-Eyed Detective and you really, really hate it when your men end up being prime suspects for homicides.

The police dragged you into the station for questioning, wanting to know if you knew anything. Like hell you did, and you kept your mouth shut. They let you go eventually, but not before they let you know there was a warrant out for Scout’s arrest and you managed to steal a look at their case files to find the address of the bar Scout exploded in.

Sneaking around the CRIME SCENE: DO NOT ENTER tape was a cinch as always—you didn’t even have to get your suit dirty. The piece of shit bar you’d never enter on your own time yields little—some blood splatters. The owner, once you track him down and intimidate him, tells you a bit more—that Scout had been drinking pretty heavily and had been incited by some stupid remarks into nailing the victim through the eye with one of his knives. Time stops, everyone freezes. Scout grabs the knife and runs.

There’s no shaking his testimony. Since Scout lost that eye and got that freaky robot arm, he’s been less able to blend in with everybody else—there’s no chance it could’ve been another angry knife-happy guy.

Your next stop is over to Scout’s apartment. The place is trashed, probably because the police have been here first. But you check the hiding places where Scout hides shit from the law enforcement (they’ve been through a time or two) and find nothing: no spare knives or cash, no backup hats, and certainly no licorice scotty dogs. Your guess is that he came back here first and then attempted to drop off the face of the earth.

You think while you head back to the office. Scout’s not going to get off for this unless every witness in the bar mysteriously kicks it. Worst case scenario, there’re fingerprints somewhere in the bar—on the counter, on money in the till—that’ll put Scout in the room, and that’s if he doesn’t ditch the knife that can probably be matched to the victim’s wounds. Worst of all is Scout’s record—burglary, grand larceny, manslaughter and a few cases where he was acquitted of arson. Any jury’d take one look at a rap sheet like that and wouldn’t take the time to check out the evidence of this case before sentencing him 20 to life. Scout’s not stupid and he’d know that’s the most likely course of action… you can’t blame him for going on the lam.

You jog up the stairs and turn down the hall to your office as you mull over what the team’s course of action should be. Demoman and Brawler look at you questioningly as you walk in the office, and tersely you fill them in as you start to make some tea.

“So whadda we do, boss?” Brawler asks when you’re finished.

“Nothing,” you say as you drop precisely one sugar cube into your tea. Your fingers shake a little in frustrated anger as you stir delicately with a spoon. You hate that you can’t do a thing about what’s going on because whatever you do, things would simply get worse. 

 _He was your man, damnit!_  

“We will do nothing at all.”


	3. Chapter 3

Your name is Peccant Scofflaw, and you just received word that your sometime lover murdered a man in a drunken fit of anger.

You steeple your fingers together and lean back on your chair. “You’re sure about that?” you ask the cop in front of you, letting a bit of incredulity color your question. Truth to be told, you aren’t fooling. You’re a little surprised Scout’s made a mistake like this—he must be more off balance from your continued courtship than you suspected.

The jittery little man looks around shiftily. “Yeah,” he said. “Witnesses all confirm ‘s a guy with a metal arm and one eye. Police’ve got fingerprints at the scene and some blood from the vic in Scout’s apartment. He’s as good as gone.”

You hum under your breath as you ponder that. “I see,” you say, drawing out the second word. “Well, Itchy, thank you for letting me know. Now what was that favor you wanted in return?…”

*********

Your name is Snooping Scout and you have been skittering through town like a rat in the sewers for the past week. You’ve got nowhere to be, nowhere to stay, and nowhere to go. You don’t have anyone owing you favors significant enough to merit giving you a place to cool off and you don’t want to risk even brushing against the Scoundrels at a time like this, and so you talk to no one.

It’s not a high profile case. The brass are making some noise about it and you were in an article on the front page of some newspapers, but it’s not a crazy enough case to merit constant media attention and it looks like Deadeyed Detective and Commissioner Scratch are trying to keep it that way. Still, your picture’s been printed often enough that you don’t want to risk being seen by anyone at all.

You’re in a tough spot, that’s for sure. You don’t want to get found by the cops, and you don’t want to get noticed by the players in the world of crime. You used to be grey enough to blend in both worlds, but now there’s a giant fucking spotlight putting you obnoxiously on display. Your stomach crawls with fear and anxiety and you’re getting more paranoid by the minute.

It’s when you’re camped out in a corner of a warehouse on the riverfront that Scofflaw takes the opportunity to randomly run into you yet again.

His beaming smile is the first thing you see when he nudges you in the side to wake you up from where you’re huddled behind some crates. “Scout,” he says genially in greeting as you blink the sleep out of your eyes and try to figure out what’s going on, “Scout, Scout, Scout. Just what  _have_  you been up to? All this murder and invisibility, it’s not like you!” You jerk away against the crates and scramble to get up up up, off the floor and out of there, but Scofflaw trips you just as happily as he greets you and you fall flat on your face back to the cement instead.

“So I was thinking,” the irrepressible leader of the Twilight Scoundrels goes on, “that maybe this situation you’re in isn’t so bad as it looks, see? I means sure, you’re on the run, no family to hide with, no friends…” he trails off delicately. “Those crazy cops are hunting you down again and you’ve got nowhere to go. Nowhere but up, I think,” he adds brightly.

You sit up warily. He’s probably not going to let you just run away—not while he’s in full spiel mode—but there’s always a chance. He’s using that golden tongue of his liberally and it irks you because what he’s saying makes sense. You have a vague idea of what he’s suggesting, and you’d rather not hear the offer because you’re not sure how you’d answer it.

He’s looming up close to you suddenly, and you subtly try to lean back to maintain distance. It doesn’t work.

“You might not see it this way, but it appears to me that we can help each other out here,” Scofflaw says softly, eyes intent on yours. “You need a place to go and I happen to have a job opening.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. How are you supposed to respond to that? This isn’t an offer to toe the line of the law, this is an offer to jump of a goddamn cliff of no return. It’s the smart thing to do—you’d have a measure of protection against federal retribution. It’s freedom to walk the city with less of a threat of a jail cell looming over your shoulder than you have now, something you’re finding you desperately want. It’s a decision that seems so obvious you’re surprised your street-smart self hasn’t already answered yes. It shouldn’t mean this much.

Detective’ll be short a man again, you think, but you’d probably end up actively working against your old team instead of simply forcing them to get a new guy. You worked hard for their fucking respect, grudging as it was, and it means something.

Part of you—a very small part—is shakily wondering how you could have been stupid enough to make such a huge mistake that your world has basically become “join the anti-Meddlesome-Company team” or variations of “go crazy” and “die.”

Scofflaw doesn’t break the eye contact all while you think it through, which is something you almost never do. You’re the first to look away and you open your mouth, starting words that aren’t spoken, still at a loss.

“What sort of… job?” you finally ask, biting down hard on the wiggling worm impaled on the hook.

The fisherman smiles, very slowly. “I’ve found I’m short a man.” The corners of Scofflaw’s eyes crinkle as if at some joke. “I need someone who’s good with knives.”

You don’t appreciate the reminder, but you scowl and nod. “Sure,” you say, less hesitantly but no less unenthusiastically. “Sounds good.”

Scofflaw holds out a hand. “Excellent,” he purrs as you take it, and then the goddamn shadow magic comes out and it  _burns_. He gets his mouth over yours before you can scream at the shock of it and he forces it open in a loving kiss. You can feel the magic sinking roots into your veins and burning paths to your heart, dripping down your throat like you’ve got a horrible cold and a bad post-nasal drip that leaves you crying for the attempt to swallow. It hits every nerve in your body and you’d be doubled up from the pain of it if Scofflaw wasn’t holding you up, bizarrely comforting; his free hand cradles your head as he goes ever deeper, thumb tenderly rubbing circles on one cheek.

It feels like forever goes by. The pain begins to lessen. The kiss continues and you get sucked into that sensation instead until you’re participating fully and pressing back up against him. You don’t notice when the fire sinks into icy stillness at the back of your mind—you’re too busy dealing with Scofflaw’s hands down your pants and the excited need that passes in an electric current between you.

*********

Your name is Snooping Scout, and Peccant Scofflaw made you a member of the Twilight Scoundrels.


End file.
